


Dream Girl

by Shame_I_Win



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Billy Collins - Freeform, Dreams vs. Reality, Elsanna - Freeform, F/F, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Loss of Parent(s), Not Incest, past Anna/Rapunzel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:50:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2806637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shame_I_Win/pseuds/Shame_I_Win
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anna thinks that pantsuit-girl from the café might be her dream girl--if only she weren't so bad at handling reality. Elsa can't quite admit how much she loves Billy Collins, among other things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Four-piece story that I'm really proud of. 
> 
> The italics are Anna imagining a possible life with Elsa.

The first time Anna sees her, she thinks the blond is probably uptight as heck. Like seriously. A pantsuit on a Saturday? And a bun? Anna is supposed to be working on her senior thesis paper (something about gender identity in Ancient Greek Literature) but she's bored, easily distracted, and the girl is hot, and oh yeah, she's really bored.

Because she's so bored, she starts to imagine lounging with pantsuit-girl on a queen bed. The blond would probably be reading a book about—God knows what—architecture in eighteenth century England, and Anna would be draped across the bed, head resting against stocking-encased feet, flipping through channels on the television.

_She lands on one of those music channels which play nothing but old music videos from the 80s. A familiar opening sequence catches her eye. Before she knows what she's doing, Anna's on her feet, bouncing until the entire bed sways._

_Pantsuit-girl is startled out of her book. "What—"_

_"Ice. Ice. Baby!" Anna stage whispers. Well, she tries to anyways. It comes out as more of a shout._

_"Anna!" Pantsuit-girl is horrified._

_"Oh, come on, baby. This is just how I roll!" Anna winks vigorously._

_"Can't you walk like a normal person?" the girl grumbles._

_"But baby, I know you love it when I'm on my back for you."_

Anna guffaws loudly, not sure if she’s more amused by the scandalized expression imaginary-pantsuit-girl is wearing or the thought of her own fictional self-attempting to dance to Vanilla Ice while being smooth.

The rest of the café stares at her. Including pantsuit-girl. Awkward. Anna coughs and pulls up an online copy of the Odyssey on her laptop to peruse.

* * *

 

In her apartment, things are tense. She broke up with Rapunzel a week ago, and her ex-girlfriend's stuff is still everywhere. Anna immediately regrets leaving the café when she opens the door. Rapunzel and Flynn are in the living room, loading stuff into boxes.

"Oh." Flynn settles a box onto the counter. "Hey," he offers clumsily.

Anna ignores him.

"You don't have to do this," she pleads with Rapunzel's back.

"Yes, I do." She doesn't turn to face Anna. "It's over. Finally," she sighs, like it's a fucking relief.

"So you can start something with  _him_?" Anna jerks her chin at Flynn, who fidgets helplessly. The anger creeps into her voice now. It makes her sound sullen and bitter. She  _feels_  sullen and bitter.

"Flynn and I are  _not_  doing anything." Rapunzel still won't look at her.

"But you want to," Anna grinds out. "What was I? The college experiment?"

"You know what?" Rapunzel whirls, eyes flashing. "I am so sick of you, acting like your life is some sort of movie. Like we're all just characters to be moved around at whim to advance whatever plot lines you have going on. Grow up, Anna."

"What does that even mean?" Anna gives in to the urge to yell. "I love you."

Rapunzel scoffs. "No, you love whatever fantasy version of a girlfriend you have tucked away in some closet in the back of your head. You don't love me. You only ever fall in love with ideas."

Anna wants to fight back, wants to scream, wants to prove that her love means more than whatever cliché shadow Rapunzel is reducing it to. But she's given up already. She knows how this scene is supposed to end. It makes for better drama that way.

Storming out of the apartment, Rapunzel calls out, "Try not to be here tomorrow."

* * *

 

The next time she sees pantsuit-girl, she's not in a pantsuit. She's wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt in the middle of the park, looking absolutely normal. Except for the disgruntled white cat at the end of a black leash.

Is she trying to walk her cat?

"It's for a bet," the girl explains quickly, noticing Anna's stare. "My roommate—well, nothing. She just thinks that dogs are better than cats, so I'm trying to prove that cats can do anything dogs can do and more."

"Oh."

"Yeah." The girl self-consciously sweeps loose hair out of her face.

Anna should say something like, "Need any help?" or at least, "Good luck." But the muscles in her throat jam and she only manages a nod before moving on.

Somewhere, twelve flights above, Rapunzel is dumping the last of her stuff in a black garbage bag and taking it out of Anna's pathetic life. God, she needs space. Anna winds up at the animal shelter, halfway through the paperwork to adopt a new kitten before she remembers she needs to notify her landlord.

* * *

 

_"But dogs are so much better than cats," Anna moans, flopping onto the bed._

_"You just say that because you've never owned a cat before," the girl insists. "Come on. He's cute, right?"_

_Anna regards the pile of white fur that has been deposited on her bed skeptically. "Maybe." A pink nose pokes out and sniffs Anna's fingers. "He's okay. You're cute."_

_Anna falls in love with the shade of pink the girl's cheeks turn._

* * *

 

Anna keeps seeing the girl at the café. Occasionally in the park too, but she keeps her distance then, afraid to have another "conversation." Visiting the Laundromat due to a dryer malfunction, Anna sees the girl depositing quarters into the coin slot. She immediately turns around and waits four hours before returning for her clothes. Each new encounter, new outfit, new accessory, feline or not, inspires new daydreams.

Sometimes they're in Anna's apartment, now devoid of all traces of Rapunzel. Sets of clothing way too classy for Anna to wear have found their way into her closet. There's a layer of white cat fur covering the sofa. It looks more comforting than it’s ever been.

Other times, they're just at the café, like always, but sitting at the same table, like never, and when the girl tosses her head back to laugh at one of Anna's jokes, Anna reaches out and touches her fingers. The girl looks back at her and smiles, grasping Anna's hand firmly in hers.

Once Anna devotes an entire afternoon to an imaginary dialogue in the grocery store, arguing over whether Raisin Bran is worse than Mini Wheats.

More than once, Anna imagines sliding her fingers along the girl's thighs, watching the pink rise in her face. She imagines laving her tongue across pale skin. She imagines the sound of the girl's mewling, keening, whimpering.

Her fantasies get more fantastical. She pretends that the girl is really the ruler of some mystical land, presiding over her kingdom with grace, magical powers, and a really big white cat. In this universe Anna alternates between playing a knight, a princess, and a common ice peddler. Each role is wholly satisfying; within a few plot twists Anna always finds herself appointed as the queen's right hand, best friend, and clandestine lover.

There are increasingly elaborate wedding plans in which they decide to wear jeans instead of dresses. A honeymoon in the tropics. And when Anna is really spacing out, children named after Greek historians.

Put simply, Anna conceives of and contemplates any encounter which ends with the declaration, "I love you." Gentle, desperate, steady. How Anna says it doesn't matter. The girl receives each avowal solemnly, without question.

She wanders through Anna's dreams like an insolent nomad.

* * *

 

Anna's parents love her. They really do. Though they might have hoped she would be the one taking them out to dinner by now, not the other way around.

Anna's mother orders the grilled salmon with a side of steamed vegetables. Her father gets a burger.

When they ask how things with Rapunzel are going, Anna's answer is clipped, betraying just the right amount of stoic anguish. They offer their condolences. And a soda. Then they ask about her goals for the future.

Part of Anna wants to say "talk to the girl in the café." But another part of Anna isn't sure she even wants that.

So she shrugs, chews her pasta, and tries to exude an air of youthful nonchalance, as if her life is exciting and spontaneous and not at all terrifying.

* * *

 

Every time Anna sees the girl sit down with a cup of some mysterious drink cradled between her fingers, her heart nearly leaps out of her chest in a desperate bid to be near the object of its obsessions. But Anna's body stays put. She has a dozen possibilities for how their first interaction—the one-sided conversation about cat walking doesn't count—could go. She could be clumsy, tripping over bags and spilling her drink right onto the girl's table, for which she'd apologize profusely, dabbing at the coffee stains on the girl's blouse with a napkin. Maybe she'd actually manage to be smooth and walk over to the table like a normal person. She could tell the girl she's really pretty, even when she's in a pantsuit.

Anna might even come off as genuine. She has a knack for that. All her elementary school teachers used to gush about her vibrant personality on the back of her report cards. "Anna is one of the friendliest, most outgoing kids in her class. Everyone loves to be around her, and she has truly been a delight to know." Elementary school Anna adored fairy tales and believed wholeheartedly in love-at-first-sight. Then she got to high school and the commentary was reduced to "Good effort."

For some reason, Anna can't quite bring herself to put those much-vaunted interpersonal skills to good use. Almost every day now, she lingers in the café, waiting for the girl to show up, and stays there at least five minutes after she leaves. A couple of times (a few? no, surely it couldn't have been that many), Anna catches the girl gazing in her direction. Whenever this happens, she immediately redirects her attention to the empty space above the girl's head and forgets to breathe.

Once, when the two of them make eye contact, the girl blushes. That shade of pink is absolutely perfect.

* * *

 

Merida examines Anna's face, tensed for any reaction.

"So, they're getting married."

"Yeah." Eyes trained on Anna's, Merida swirls her straw through her diet Coke.

"But—" Anna isn't sure what to say. "But isn't that kind of soon? They weren't even dating last I heard."

"Well." Merida pauses, choosing her words carefully. "They've known each other forever, and they've been together for… a while."

"Oh." How long is "a while"? Anna doesn't want to know. "Tell them congratulations."

Two days later, Anna gets a wedding invitation in the mail.

* * *

 

One day, the girl has a date. It's obviously a date. The two keep touching and laughing at each other. They're loud; Anna can hear their muffled voices through the glass window. The date is a brunette. Anna wonders if that's her type.

It's never occurred to her before that the girl could be seeing someone else.

Someone  _else_? She's not even seeing  _you_.

* * *

 

Anna attends Rapunzel and Flynn's wedding. It's elegant, clearly paid for by their parents, but not opulent. Fairly traditional. If this were the closing scene of a rom-com and Anna the pining lesbian heroine, she would shamelessly her undying love in the brief pause after the preacher pronounces, "Speak now or forever hold your peace." Moved beyond words, Rapunzel would sprint away from the altar and back into Anna's arms. But Anna doesn't want that anymore.

Instead, maybe she'll make a toast at the reception, blessing the new couple with health, happiness, and prosperity; confess that she wasn't exactly the best girlfriend in the world (though she'd loved Rapunzel all the same); and announce that she has transformed this love into goodwill and forgiveness towards Flynn—so long he treats his new wife right. It would be a precious ending to a heartwarming movie. But in real life it would involve acknowledging that she is attending the wedding of her ex-girlfriend and her former best friend, who have been seeing each other "for a while" and had likely been screwing behind her back.

Anna can't imagine the awkward.

Of course, she can pretend that this is a mid-season episode of some particularly heart-wrenching soap opera and proceed to get poignantly smashed at the open bar.

But she doesn't, because she's remembering that this is real life.

The entire night, she huddles with Merida and some other friends at their table in the corner of the ballroom. She laughs exactly three times, cracks some jokes, claps politely with everyone else. When it comes time to greet the new couple, she smiles at their noses and wishes them all the best. She bought them a set of cutlery for as a wedding gift.

As the evening wears on, she makes an early exit and returns home without getting obligatorily drunk at a bar along the way. She spends the night on the couch in front of her television, imagining pantsuit-girl and her date curled up on their own couch somewhere, snuggling and giggling, eating mangos.

It's a good thing Anna hates mangos.

* * *

 

Her thesis advisor mentions that one of her colleagues, Professor Milo Thatch, is going out to a dig site in Greece for a year. He needs an intern with adequate knowledge of classical languages. And he's paying.

Anna takes it. It sounds acceptably adventurous, which is all that really matters.

Life in the Mediterranean is hot. And dusty. But refreshing. And real.

One of the younger interns, Kristoff, has a thing for her, but for obvious reasons, it goes nowhere. When Anna has free time, she travels a little in Europe. She meets a girl in Dresden. It doesn't go anywhere either. The only time she thinks of pantsuit-girl is during one of Professor Thatch's presentations at a local Greek university. A woman is wearing the exact same pantsuit Anna first saw on the other side of the ocean. But she's so identifiably Mediterranean. And like forty. The woman is a boring speaker.

Professor Thatch encourages Anna to apply for his Masters program when they return home. Anna does.

* * *

 

Anna's been Stateside for five months when it happens. She's got a new (though equally un-classy) apartment in a new city, a part-time job and a stipend. She can balance a monthly budget. She files her freaking taxes. In the morning she doesn't waste any time hanging around in cafés. She runs to Dunkin' Donuts, taps her foot through the line, and rushes her order through the bored-looking kid at the counter.

She's heard the rumors of Rapunzel and Flynn's impending divorce and the speculations that maybe they married too young.

She's halfway to the counter at Dunkin' when she notices that the next customer has a substantial amount of white-blond hair. Her foot stops tapping, and her brain throws a fit.

Pantsuit-girl waits for her friend to place her order and add sugar to her cup. Is she just a friend? It's definitely not her date from before. The two head out together. Anna shoves her way out of the crowded shop to follow them.

Real-life Anna rolls her eyes and thinks,  _Seriously? You don't even know her. Are you really going to stalk her all over the city just so you can discover that you're completely incompatible?_

But daydreamer-Anna, little-kid-Anna, True-Love-with-capital-letters-Anna needs to know. Because what if they  _are_  compatible? What if they are actually finely, perfectly attuned to living life on the same couch? What if Anna can have white cats on leashes and professional clothes in her closet and someone to listen when she says, "I love you"?

Pantsuit-girl and her friend stop beneath a skyscraper.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Elsa. Try not to be so mopey."

"I'm not mopey. I'm just tired."

They separate from each other. No kiss. No longing gazes. Not even a hug. Anna takes this as a good omen. The friend disappears into the building. Pant—no, Elsa (Real-life Anna hums her approval that the girl has an actual identity and True-Love-Anna simply swoons at the lovely, unassuming name) hurries along the pavement in the fast walk that all city-dwellers learn. Anna breaks into a jog.

"Hey!" The girl turns and sees Anna puffing up to her, wearing her best "friendliest in the class" smile, probably red in the face and moving with all the grace of a sack of mangos. At first, she seems confused, and then something like recognition crinkles in the corners of her eyes.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" Anna breathes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anna thinks that pantsuit-girl from the café might be her dream girl-if only she weren't so bad at handling reality. Elsa can't quite admit how much she loves Billy Collins, among other things. Modern AU. Elsanna. Not sisters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prepare yourself for Billy Collins references galore.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" the girl asks breathlessly.

Elsa’s mouth opens to shout, “Yes! You’re the girl from Oak’s Lounge, the one who always came with her laptop and sipped her coffee and ran into me walking my cat, which was possibly the most embarrassing encounter of my life, made all the worse because I may have been inopportunely attracted on you at the time!”

But of course, that would be bordering on creepy to say out loud, so Elsa catches her tongue and squeaks out a startled “No!” She’s always been bad with words.

The girl’s face falls, but only for a moment. Then the smile bounces back, radiant as ever, bombarding Elsa’s wall of reserve with sunshine, rainbows, and white teeth. “Oh, well, sorry then. I’m Anna. It’s nice to meet you.” She stretches an enthusiastic hand towards her.

Elsa stares at the proffered appendage like it might be a ticking bomb before she kicks herself into polite-mode. “Same to you. I’m Elsa.” The squeeze of Anna’s fingers makes the blood rush to Elsa’s face. They hold on to each other for an inappropriately long time.

“So are you around here often?”

Elsa nearly collapses, because it’s almost like the girl might be interested in _her_ , and just when she manages to steady her legs from that shock, she nearly sinks to the concrete, realizing that she doesn’t come to this part of town that often and that she’s only here to walk Belle to her first day at her new job.

“Uh, yeah,” she says brightly. “Well, sometimes…I’m here. You know, to get a coffee. And uh, hang out with Belle…my friend.” She points weakly up at the building behind them as though that explains everything.

Anna’s grin only broadens. “Well, I guess I’ll see you sometime then. When you’re around. We could get a coffee together.”

“Yeah,” Elsa replies, stunned. “Yeah, I mean—that sounds nice.”

Somehow, Anna ups the wattage in her smile. It’s so bright it has to hurt. “I can’t wait.”

They stand around like idiots for a few more seconds before Elsa remembers that she has to get to work and stutters out some sort of apology. Luckily Anna appears a little self-conscious herself, and they manage to excuse themselves without further humiliation.

The rest of Elsa’s day goes on to be wonderful.

* * *

 

Elsa holds out for two days before she visits the Dunkin’ Donuts on East Street again. She didn’t want to seem too eager, she hated the _idea_ of being so eager, but Elsa _is_ freaking eager, and she has to see the girl again. When she walks into the shop half an hour earlier than last time so she won’t miss out on work, a wave of self-reproach crashes into her. What is she doing, coming here to wait for some girl who she sort of knew and talked to maybe twice her entire life? Was Anna’s “see you” an invitation or merely small talk?

Elsa doesn’t even like coffee.

By the time she clambers into an uncomfortable plastic chair by the window with some hot chocolate and a donut, Elsa knows this is a terrible idea. Her mind is already considering when the next bus to the industrial district on the outskirts of town leaves and wondering whether sulfuric acid was a good idea for a catalyst after all.

“Hey!” Suddenly, the sunshine seems way, way too bright, or maybe it’s Anna beaming at her like she just discovered a suitable replacement for Warfarin. “Fancy meeting you here.”

 “Yes, um, hello.” Elsa fumbles over the words, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles in her blouse. “It’s good to see you again.”

Her donut and drink all but finished, Elsa twiddles her fingers. Anna makes a joke about the fast food chains which is surprisingly astute and actually funny. The laugh that bursts from her lips is unexpected, but Elsa manages to keep from snorting like a farm animal. Anna’s irises are intensely blue, not the wan robin eggs that she’s accustomed to seeing in the mirror, and she has a hard time deciding whether or not to look away.

“Maybe you want to go on date some time?” Anna’s smile shrinks shyly as she asks. Only a few of her teeth peek out.

Elsa blinks, repressing the urge to blush and titter. Is it presumptuous for this girl to assume she’s gay? Whatever, she’s too bubbly inside to analyze.

“That sounds nice,” she intones carefully.

Not at all put off by Elsa’s restraint, the girl unleashes a torrent of speculation on dates, times, and the best Italian restaurants in the city, and by the time they have to leave for their respective lives, Elsa’s phone is heavier by one ten-digit number.

* * *

 

There’s a package waiting for her in the lobby when Elsa returns to her apartment that evening. It’s a late birthday present from her parents.

_Dear Elsa,_

_Happy Birthday! For our little poet._

_Signed,_

_Mama and Papa_

All in her mother’s handwriting, of course.

The last time Elsa wrote a poem outside of class she was eight and it was about dolphins. Her parents always did like to live in the past. Sighing, she tears the wrapping paper off an anthology of Billy Collins poems. She rolls her eyes. Isn’t there some sort of rule against a serious poet being a bestseller?

“Rrreow?”

She glances down at smiles at Marshmallow who’s perched on his haunches, curiosity aroused by the sound of an opening package. Nimbly, he hops onto the counter and curls up in the plastic-lined box. Elsa doesn’t feel like yelling at him for going out of bounds or calling her parents to thank them. Both tasks can wait until tomorrow.

Instead she lies on the couch, flipping mindlessly through her new book, wondering whether it would be too forward to send Anna a text so soon. Her dreams are filled with toothy, immortal-looking smiles.

* * *

 

The date proceeds excellently. Honestly, Elsa can’t remember the last time a date went so well. Actually, she can, but that last relationship ended rather sourly, and she doesn’t want to associate Anna with Meg.

Anna, it turns out, is a grad student at the local university, studying Hellenic Cultures and Influences, which at first makes Elsa worry that she’s one of those flighty humanities students who compensate for their lack of ambition with the occasional use of sociology terms and the moral superiority of having followed their dreams. But Anna is sweet and down-to-earth and doesn’t dismiss Elsa’s biochemical career with an insecure and disinterested oh-I-was-never-really-good-at-that. She’s the only girl Elsa’s ever dated seems remotely intrigued by her experimentation with blood-thinners. In return, she listens with fascination as the girl recounts her time abroad. Anna seems to have a knack for people-watching and people-commenting. She compares European and American traditions, pokes fun at liberal and conservative politicians, and talks about her future with a measured but cheerful countenance.

Playful and self-assured.

Elsa finds it attractive.

And strangely enough, for all her lightheartedness, Anna seems...mature. There’s something about the way she looks at Elsa that puts her at ease. Even as they play get-to-know-you, Anna talks to her they’ve known each other for months. Elsa doesn’t have to worry about being a good first date, about gushing over Anna’s life story, about doing all the squishy stuff you’re supposed to do when you fall in love. In the little moments when Elsa forgets her reserve and dignity, Anna’s lips twitch, but she isn’t surprised or triumphant. Just pleased.

When they part for the night, Elsa wants a kiss, but she can’t bring herself to ask for it. They linger at the entrance of the restaurant, saying goodbyes, reassuring themselves and each other that there will be a second date. There’s a brief moment where Elsa thinks Anna might kiss her, but she’s afraid to lean in and be rejected—or worse, lean in and be accepted out of pity—so she restrains herself, and the moment comes to nothing. Anna asks after her cat. Elsa lets it slide.

It’s her only regret of the night.

* * *

 

“Elsa!”

She jerks her head up at the sound of her name from her window seat. She’s only just started sipping her hot chocolate. Usually it takes Anna until she’s about halfway through to show up.

“Oh, Belle.” She winces at the lack of warmth in her own voice. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too. What are you doing here? Was I supposed to meet you here? Did I miss your call?”

“Oh, no,” Elsa assures hurriedly. Belle arches an eyebrow. “I just-uh-wanted some hot chocolate today is all.” She holds up her cup as though she’s offering a juicy piece of evidence to the jury.

“Out here? This is nowhere near your apartment or your lab.”

“I just wanted a change of pace.” Her fingers tighten around the Styrofoam cup. Defensively, she meets Belle’s skeptical eyes and then happens to glance past her friend, to the line of Dunkin’ customers.

Anna beams, teeth shining.

Frozen, Elsa shifts her gaze back to Belle. She hasn’t told her friends that she is seeing anybody, partly because she wants to be sure that the relationship will last and partly because they get so humiliatingly gleeful at the prospect of Elsa having a romantic life. Normally they have to cajole, prod, and wheedle her into a movie with their cousin’s coworker’s younger sister. They’ll have a field day when they discover Anna.

Nervous fingers nearly crinkle the Styrofoam cup. She’s always hated talking about herself. As a kid, she’d never understood how adults could have recreational encounters based entirely on the conversational skills of the parties involved.

Then she notices Anna again, frowning and confused, obviously uncertain what to make of Elsa’s detachment, and realizes that she’s an idiot. Steeling herself, she lifts a few fingers off the warm cup and waves shyly. Immediately the smile erupts back onto Anna’s face and almost as quickly, Belle pivots, following the direction of Elsa’s hand to Anna’s returning gesture.

Heat floods Elsa’s face as Belle swivels back.

“Who’s that?”

“Um, that’s Anna.”

Belle is out for blood.

“Who’s Anna?”

“…a friend.”

“From?”

“Connecticut.”

“Are you going to introduce us?”

Elsa pleads to a god she doesn’t believe in that Belle will just go away. “I suppose.”

Belle doesn’t sit down in the only other chair at the table, but she shows little sign of leaving either. Elsa keeps pleading, right up until the moment when Anna walks over to them, caffeinated drink in hand.

“Hey,” she nods at both of them.

Cringing internally, Elsa does the honors. “Belle, Anna. Anna, Belle.”

“Nice to meet you,” Anna says brightly.

“Same.” Belle’s searching gaze encounters a wall of agreeable candor. To Elsa’s relief, this seems satisfactory to her meddling friend, who announces, “Well, I’ll be out of your way. Hope to see you again, Anna.”

“Of course, I’d love to.” Anna shoots Elsa a quizzical look before sliding into the seat across from her, as though asking whether it’s okay to be friendly with Belle. Their knuckles brush. Elsa can practically feel Belle’s eyes honing in on the contact, but she smiles encouragingly to Anna anyways.

“I’d tell you to be less mopey, Elsa, but I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“I’m not mopey.”

“Bye, Elsa.”

“Bye.”

Finally, finally she walks out the door.

Anna exhales deeply and smiles sheepishly at Elsa. Her outgoing demeanor immediately seems a little less polite and little more comfortable. “Did I pass?” she asks coyly.

Somewhere, there’s a flirtatious remark Elsa could make about Anna passing her test, but she doesn’t feel daring enough to try it out.

“Definitely.”

* * *

 

Anna falls in love with everything she meets, Elsa realizes as she watches her gaze fondly at a bird in the maple tree. For an irrational moment, she’s wildly jealous of the dead mice and pebbles on the lakeshore and the lonely fire hydrant at the corner of Parker and Main, because all these little things seem to have stolen Anna’s heart before Elsa’s even had a chance.

Then Anna leans into her a little, and the storm in Elsa’s chest settles.

She works up the courage. “Can I kiss you?”

Anna twists against her, a delighted grin spreading across her face. Both of them fumble, awkward in their own happiness and even after they break apart, Anna gazes at her so adoringly, like Elsa is some creature with a pretty face who has no purpose but to exist perfectly on park benches.

Sometimes, when Elsa gets bored of sifting through medical journals and reports of clinical trials, she curls up with Marshmallow in her bed and goes through a few Billy Collins poems. Mostly she thinks they’re just stupid. Some guy writes a few sentences about his life, puts line breaks in weird places, and tacks on a sappy, yet-vague-enough-to-be-taken-as-profound ending. (Though it’s probably more than Elsa can articulate.)

Anyone who goes by the name Billy must be a hopeless romantic. Absolutely beyond salvation.

Elsa reads Billy Collins poems disdainfully all evening and then tries not to think about Anna all night.

* * *

 

One Saturday night, she finds herself sitting on Anna’s couch while her girlfriend—is she allowed to use that title?—bustles about in the kitchen. She stares at all Anna’s…stuff. Books litter the coffee table. A desk in the corner houses a black laptop and an avalanche of papers. There are little trinkets everywhere, miniature statues, leaves pressed and framed, postcards from various nations.

“Here.” Anna holds out a mug of something steaming. Elsa takes it. Coffee. Delicious-smelling, but Elsa knows she’d rather eat beetles than drink it. She takes a sip anyways and puts the mug down.

“Do you need any cream or…”

“No, I, um, don’t really drink coffee.”

“Really? Wait. But at Dunkin’ Donuts you—don’t you?”

Cheeks burning, Elsa mumbles, “It’s hot chocolate.”

Anna laughs and rises to her feet. “Well, geez, you could’ve said something. I’ll go and—“

“No!” Elsa tugs her back onto the couch. “Stay.” Her heart thuds frantically as Anna collapses back in the couch. They sit in silence. Elsa notices the picture above the wall, a sentimental painting of rustic life: a bonneted woman talking to someone through a half-open door, two cowboys at the card table, a boy playing his accordion, a man with a broad hat twirling around the room with a red-frocked girl.

“That was from my parents. Birthday present for the new apartment, you know?”

“Oh. It’s nice. My parents got me a book of poems.”

“How are they?”

“Kind of silly.”

“Who are th—“

And then Elsa is kissing Anna on her couch, flushed and out-of-breath like she’s been dancing at a dusty saloon all night, and yelping as hot coffee spills over both of them.

It’s humiliating, and Elsa is apologizing, backing away, putting space between herself and her disastrous attempt at seduction. Anna giggles as though the sky isn’t falling down on them, but then sobers up at the mortification of Elsa’s face.

“Well, this is awkward. I mean—this—not you—you’re not awkward.”

Elsa chooses not to argue that blatantly untrue statement. “Your couch.”

“Don’t worry, I think most of it is on our clothes,” Anna points out optimistically.

Still blanched from embarrassment, Elsa can only nod weakly.

“Next time, give me a little warning.” Anna scoots closer. “Like this.”

“What?”

“Hey, Elsa. I’m going to kiss you now.”

“Okay.”

* * *

 

Belle and Jasmine practically pounce on her at the café.

“H—“

“So?” Jasmine interrupts.

“What?”

“How are things with Anna?” Belle demands.

Clenching her jaw, Elsa mutters, “They’re nice.”

Jasmine snorts. “Nice? So you think she’s boring?”

“What? No! She’s not boring.”

“Nobody says that it’s going ‘nice’ unless they’re bored out of their mind, and they don’t have a reason to end it.”

“That’s ridiculous! Why would I—that’s not even—it’s…” Elsa splutters to a stop.

“You forget that Elsa the master of understatement. Anna could be Brazilian supermodel, and Elsa would still say, ‘Oh, she’s nice.’”

“What—what does Brazil have to do with any of this? That’s completely stereo—”

But Jasmine and Belle are already laughing at her.

There are so many things Elsa wants to say about Anna, so much another woman could probably gush about, for hours. But Elsa doesn’t really know how. Maybe she’ll just have them meet Anna.

“So, do you like her?” Jasmine demands.

“Clearly,” Elsa mutters. Then, noticing their still-ravenous eyes, she snaps, “My life is not your Hallmark movie.”

“I beg to differ,” Belle says primly.

* * *

 

Questing fingers brush Elsa’s bare waist, and she takes that as permission to sneak her hands under Anna’s shirt. Beneath her, Anna groans. Pretty soon, they’re both shirtless in Elsa’s living room, no dangerous beverages this time, and she paints kisses over Anna’s neck. Anna pants helplessly, makes noises that send Elsa’s head spinning.

Neck, chest, nipples, stomach, hips.

“Jesus, Elsa. Keep—”

All the way down, Anna’s fingers wrap themselves in blond locks. At the edge of her jeans, the fingers tug, towing Elsa into another dizzying kiss. Elsa’s hands unbutton, unzip, and undress below, and Anna kicks off her pants rather violently. Her fingers settle at the waistband of Elsa’s pants and through the haze of desire, Elsa captures those eager digits in her own, pulling them up above Anna’s head. She swallows a feeble protest with another kiss.

“Hush, and be good for me.”

Anna whines and bucks against her thigh, palm, fingers. It’s extremely gratifying to watch her find pleasure. As she calms, Elsa rests her head against a heaving chest.

“I love you,” Anna says.

It’s not even a question anymore. “I love you too,” Elsa murmurs as though it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Anna shifts her leg between Elsa’s. A gasp. A mischievous grin. Suddenly, Elsa is on her back, trying not to push herself against Anna’s leg too wantonly.

Anna’s hands return to the clasp of her pants, and the last thing that Elsa wants to do is wait, but the words are tumbling out of her before she can stop them. “Wait. Wait.”

“Yeah?” Anna regards her with hooded eyes, leaning back to give her space. The chill of the air on her torso only makes Elsa feel more exposed and she resists the urge to just drag Anna back into the rabbit hole. 

“Can-can you turn the light off?” Because topless is one thing—Elsa can sort of pretend she’s in a pool wearing a bathing suit—but she’s always hated taking her pants off in front of other people, and she doesn’t really shave her legs, and she’s not sure whether she can handle doing this with the ceiling light glaring down at her.

“Of course.” Anna gets up and flicks the light switch, and Elsa suppresses the instinct to put her shirt back on. She settles for huddling into her couch. Anna comes back and pulls her out again with a warm kiss.

“Should we go to the bedroom?” Anna asks between laying trails of saliva down the side of Elsa’s neck.

“Probably,” she whimpers as Anna’s teeth sink in. God, those teeth.

“We probably should have done that earlier,” Anna comments around a mouthful of Elsa’s flesh.

“Yes,” Elsa gasps, only dimly aware of what she’s agreeing to.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, defiling a maiden on your couch like a barbarian.”

“What?” Some still-alert portion of her brain has the decency to be alarmed.

“Kidding.” Anna smiles, harmless delight dancing in her eyes. Elsa is too dazed to be amused, irritated, or even surprised. “You okay?”

Elsa cranes herself forward for more contact. Anna meets her halfway but breaks off their kiss again.

“Bed.” Another wicked grin. “Some of us have standards, you know.”

Miraculously, Elsa musters up enough intelligence to formulate a response. “I didn’t see any of them earlier.”

Grin widening, teeth whiter than ever in the darkness of Elsa’s apartment, Anna teases, “Well, like I said, I was dealing with a barbarian.” Then she rolls off the couch.

“What are you doing?”

“Picking up my clothes. I don’t want to have to look for them tomorrow morning.”

“Oh.” Elsa can’t even contemplate the existence of a tomorrow. She might have planned something elaborate. Hopefully not for the morning.

“I’ll grab your shirt too. Bed?”

“Right.”

Elsa feels horribly, wonderfully bare with Anna following behind her, even though she’s still wearing her pants. By the time they get there, she’s ready to crawl under her covers, but Anna drops their clothes to the floor and hooks her fingers through Elsa’s belt loops, trapping her against her chest.

“You have a nice room,” she whispers into Elsa’s ear.

Elsa doesn’t care. She squirms, fingers scrabbling over Anna’s hips as lips trace her jawline.

“Anna…”

“Hush and be good, right?”

Anna is lucky that Elsa is reeling and throbbing, because otherwise she probably wouldn’t have a tongue anymore. The teeth are enough.

“The bed…”

Elsa can feel the grin against her skin.

“Oh, _now_ you want the bed.”

At this point, Elsa would settle for curling up in Anna’s lurid voice. She imagines the neurotransmitters that must be flooding her chemoreceptors right now, thinks about hormones blinding her judgment—

And then they’re finally, finally on the bed, and Elsa is completely embarrassed again as Anna pulls her pants down, but Anna doesn’t stare, just presses another to her lips and runs a hand over a now bare thigh.

“I used to love it when you blushed,” Anna murmurs, and Elsa’s reddening ears are lost to the shadows. “It’s adorable.”

Elsa can’t decide whether she’s offended. “Anna, _please_ …”

Anna’s hands open first her bra, then her legs, then everything.

* * *

 

“I’m Merida.”

The girl looks like she could eat Elsa for breakfast and spit her out at lunch.

Elsa holds out her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

A grin cracks open the otherwise sullen face. “At last. Anna’s been hiding you away for far too long.”

“Have not,” Anna grumbles.

“Can’t blame her for that. I’d want to hide her in a cabin up in the mountains if she were mine,” an unkempt kid says.

Merida rolls her eyes. “Thank you for your input, Hubert.”

Anna mutters something about objectification and misogynistic attitudes.

Elsa accepts it as a compliment and basks in Anna’s presence. Even if she’s mildly disturbed by the bearskin rug.

At ten, they’ll probably head home, maybe to Anna’s, maybe to Elsa’s. It doesn’t really matter. Marshmallow has enough food to last him until tomorrow night. In the morning, Elsa will take the stains out of Anna’s clothes with vinegar and baking soda—which her girlfriend is certain is witchcraft, not primitive science—or Anna will attempt to turn the contents of Elsa’s nearly empty refrigerator into “real food before you evaporate for god’s sake”—which she thinks is unnecessary, but sweet. Sometime in between, Anna might talk about her favorite messed up Greek myths and perhaps Elsa will have found a Billy Collins poem worth sharing.

Imagining her future with Anna makes Elsa feel warmer than she’ll ever admit to being.

* * *

 

The familiar voice from her phone injects cold directly into Elsa’s veins.

“Hey, Elsa. This is Kristoff. How are you doing?” An uncomfortable silence. “Anyways, I’m calling because Papa’s in the hospital. He had a heart attack, and they did CPR. He’s alive, but not…doing good. We’re at Mercy Hospital. You should come… Bye.”

A headache starts pounding at the edges of Elsa’s vision.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anna thinks that pantsuit-girl from the café might be her dream girl-if only she weren't so bad at handling reality. Elsa can't quite admit how much she loves Billy Collins, among other things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let the switching POV begin.

Anna's days are full to bursting. Job, classes, papers, and Elsa. It makes her head spin. She loves it.

She loves the way Elsa almost pouts at her in the mornings when she has to run out for a coffee and to an early lecture. It makes her stay in bed an extra ten minutes, pressing kisses along Elsa's jaw, until the girl pushes at her shoulders, breathily reminding her that they're going to be late.

It's scary sometimes, because Elsa has a retirement account and Anna still isn't sure what she's going to do after grad school. And it's absolutely terrifying when they have their first fight over whether to go out for the night. And again, when Anna wants to leave the window open to let a breeze in and Elsa accuses her of baking the apartment in sunlight. Anna shudders at the memory of it.

It's not like she's completely naïve about how relationships work. Problems happen, and Anna is ready for the big stuff. Big things Anna can handle.

Terminal illness? Summon unwavering loyalty and patience.

Sudden long-distance? Don't be stupidly jealous and call in the evenings.

Reappearance of an ex? Be respectful and polite. Get away at the first possible moment.

Cheating? Don't do it.

Elsa cheating? Bawl her eyes out. Identify what deep-seated issues are tearing apart their relationship. Address those. Rebuild trust.

Yes, Anna is quite prepared for the big stuff after two decades of rom-coms and TV dramas and real-life experience. It's the little things that scare her.

And Elsa can be unnervingly quiet. As much as she loves filling in the blanks of what Elsa is thinking (it makes her feel special), sometimes she wishes that Elsa would just spell things out for her, like: "Anna when you leave your shoes to the left of the door, it bothers me absurdly. Please leave them to the right." Which Anna could promptly do instead of having to deduce why Elsa is sulking and glaring at her boots.

But Anna finds a reserve of patience she never knew she had. These days Elsa doesn't hesitate, as though checking whether the situation is really appropriate for it, so much when she starts to say, "I love you." That bit of progress gives Anna the courage to take on the little things.

* * *

 

She shouldn't be here, at this nice restaurant downtown, clutching at her second glass of red wine like it's the last worthwhile thing in her life. Across from her, Anna beams, obviously thrilled to be on this date. The restaurant is a little fancier than usual, and Elsa knows that it's their one-year anniversary and that these things matter a lot to Anna, but she  _really_  shouldn't be here.

Earlier today, she nearly spilled a liter of 8-molar sodium hydroxide solution, much to her head's annoyance. Billy Collins wasn't a great comfort. Most of his poems about death were characteristically flippant. Maybe, on another day she would have been amused by the opinions of his dead dog, but her father wasn't a pet, or for that matter, a Pisces. And when she finally came across a solemn poem reflecting on his dead parents, the thought of her father, forever silent, sent the tears rushing to her ducts.

She coughed and hacked, savagely smothering the tears—she'd sworn never to cry over him again—and buried her nose in a disgruntled Marshmallow, convinced that her sniffling was a symptom of mild pet allergies rather than anything else.

Eventually, she remembered her date with Anna and hauled herself to the bathroom to rinse her face off. Now she's here, and she shouldn't be here, but Anna makes everything better, right?

Elsa tries to narrow her focus down to Anna's voice and her teal eyes and her playful smile with those movie-star teeth, but what's normally inevitable is currently impossible. Her mind drifts to the article she just read about CPR success rates for the elderly. 8% overall survival at one month. 3% of which are good outcomes. Another 3% chronic vegetative states. 2% somewhere in between.

_He's not…doing good._

Kristoff called twice more that day. She let him leave another two messages.

"Hey." Anna's foot nudged hers under the table. "You awake, zombie-girl?"

Summoning a brave face, Elsa taps Anna's toes with the sole of her shoe. Years ago, she decided her family wasn't going to be part of her life anymore. She isn't going to let them ruin anything with Anna. "Barely."

"Long day?" Disappointment surfaces briefly, but disappears under a wave on concern. "We can make it a short night if you want."

Elsa nods. Anna's attentiveness sits like a ball in her throat.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"No," Elsa says shortly. The grief rises thick in her throat. She coughs to clear it. "There isn't really anything to talk about." Certainly not the father who disowned her four years ago.

For once, Anna is silent.

"Hello, my name is Hans, and I'll be your server tonight. Are you ladies ready to order yet?"

"No. Sorry."

"That's alright. I'll give you a few more minutes."

Elsa hides behind her menu, avoiding Anna's gaze. She can't string the words together. Pasta. Fettuccine. Scallops. Broiled. Marinara. Sirloin. Chops. Steamed.

A hand unravels her fingers from the edge of the menu. She looks up to see Anna linking their fingers together, worry and compassion in her eyes. Elsa knows she can't keep up this façade in the face of so much gentleness. She pulls back.

The waiter returns. She pleads for more time.

Anna isn't even looking at her own menu anymore. She just stares at Elsa as though a neon sign will suddenly flash across her forehead spelling out what's wrong and what to do about it.

It's not fair, Elsa knows, for her to expect Anna to make everything okay if she doesn't tell her anything. With a deep breath, she resolves to make it through the evening without having a meltdown. Everything else can wait until tomorrow.

The waiter arrives a third time, pencil raised over his order pad. Elsa can see the exasperation in his eyes when she turns helplessly to him.

"I'll have the short ribs," Anna says. "And she'll get the shrimp scampi."

And even though Elsa has been a loser all night, Anna flies through the side orders and sends Hans packing. Elsa can sense the feebleness of her own grateful smile.

"You're really tired."

"Yeah. But it's better here with you."

She even chews and swallows some of her food at Anna's insistence. Still listless, still distracted, but the prospect of spending the night snuggled up to Anna makes everything seem manageable. She struggles and mostly succeeds in centering herself around anecdotes from Anna's childhood.

Then, she knocks over a wine glass onto the white tablecloth.

The waiter, Hans, rushes over, swearing under his breath. "Fuck. Watch what you're doing, idiot. That's—" He catches himself, remembering his place, but it's more than enough to remind Elsa of the time her father gently reprimanded her for breaking a plate and to shatter her fragile composure.

Before she can help it, she's crying and apologizing incoherently, and all the diners have swiveled in their seats to stare at the scene she's caused, and somewhere, it feels very far away, Anna is simultaneously attempting to comfort her and snarl at Hans. It's Anna who whisks her away into a taxi, who tries to clear the hair, the tears and the mucous from her crumpled face, who is so heartbreakingly, astoundingly loyal that it only makes her cry harder.

And finally, huddled in the warmth of a squishy vinyl couch, it's Anna who finds the obvious remedy to all their troubles.

"Tell me what's wrong."

* * *

 

When Elsa shatters in the middle of the restaurant, Anna doesn't have time to think about why. She's too busy telling the waiter to shut the fuck up. Part of her want to punch, to storm after him and scream in his face, to find exact change for their meal so that he can't get a tip. But instead she just throws some twenties on the table and coaxes a trembling Elsa to her feet. Elsa doesn't need a hero, doesn't need her to squabble with the waiter and demand to see a manager. She needs Anna to stay by her side, to help her into a taxi, and rub her back while whispering empty reassurances in her ear.

"Do you want to go home or to my place?" she tries to ask.

But Elsa is mostly incoherent, and Anna decides she better just bring Elsa home with her.

It's in the taxi that Anna allows herself to think, and thinking is dangerous. Imagination has always been Anna's gift and her downfall. What happened? Did Elsa lose her job? Get into an argument with someone? Anna doesn't think she's done anything to upset Elsa. Did something else happen to her?

_I went to the doctor's office, and there was …_

_There was this guy who wouldn't leave me alone…_

Shaking her head clear, she tangles her fingers in Elsa's hair. Elsa keeps apologizing into her shirt. Anna hushes her, trying to clean her face with the cloth. Is Elsa feeling guilty about something bigger than Anna's blouse? Suddenly she remembers how weirdly emotional Rapunzel had been on the night of their two-year anniversary when Anna presented her with a bouquet of white roses. About a month later, she noticed that Flynn was coming around to their apartment a lot more often.

That thought makes Anna's brain freeze, and she deliberately forces herself to quash any more conspiracy theories.

They leak through anyways. What if Elsa wants to break up with her?

_Anna, I just don't think this going to work out anymore. It's not you. It's me._

She wonders why people use that line in movies anymore. Everyone can see it coming.

The cab driver glances at them through the rearview mirror. Anna glares. He coughs. "You need a tissue or anything?"

Anna regrets scowling at him and accepts the tissues, her right arm wrapped in a helplessly protective band around Elsa. Prying the tear-streaked face out of her shoulder, she dabs at it gently. Elsa shudders and gathers herself, taking the tissue from Anna's hands and wiping herself off. She leans against the backseat of the cab and stares out the window.

It gives Anna a lot of time to think.

So when Elsa confesses, in her splintered little girl voice, that her father is dying, Anna almost laughs with relief. But she doesn't, because Elsa hurt is enough to crush the humor in any situation. Instead she sets about being a good significant other. Just like the ones she's always watched playing house in the theaters.

* * *

 

Elsa hasn't seen her family in nearly four years. Not since that final year of college when she came clean about what she'd been doing late at night with her "best friend." The resulting fallout was rather spectacular. Her parents, old-school Midwestern Lutherans, had been shocked to say the least. Somewhere in the midst of all yelling and crying, her father had reminded her, quite calmly and blatantly, that he held the purse strings. Furious, humiliated, and powerless, but blazing with righteous indignation, Elsa had told him in an uncharacteristically graphic fashion what he could do with his money.

Then she bolted, got her first job and scraped together enough cash for her last semester of college. She scrapped her plans for medical school, determined to get on firm, sovereign footing as soon as possible. A fifth year master's program. A professor who used to work in Pfizer who knew a guy who knew an important guy who was willing to hire her. She hadn't looked back since.

Sure little-brother-Kristoff tried to call on the holidays. At first she'd even picked up. But she grew quickly impatient with his insistence that she come home and work things out. Selfishly, she'd demanded that he be "on her side" all the way or not at all.

They rarely speak anymore. She doesn't even know what his major was, though she assumes that he's graduated by now.

Her mother had tried calling too, but Elsa refused to pick up. They'd said too much that was a little too true the night of her coming out, and Elsa was done. She didn't have the energy to repair what broken. She wanted to just leave it behind. So she did.

But somehow her mother keeps finding her, wherever she moves, keeps sending her postcards and birthday presents. It's frustrating, guilt-inducing and comforting all at once.

Elsa is mostly feeling the guilt right now.

* * *

 

Over the phone, her brother sounds tired, relieved, and only slightly peeved. He agrees to pick her up from the airport at noon. Despite the fact that Elsa is perfectly capable of getting to the airport on her own, Anna gets up at four to accompany her.

"Moral support," Anna insists.

Elsa was never the type to believe in the value of moral support, but she can't deny how much secure she feels with the weight of Anna's skull resting against her shoulder on the subway.

"Oh God, I'm sorry," she exclaims once she wakes up enough to notice they've arrived.

"What?" Elsa can't believe her ears.  _She's_  the one who ruined Anna's dinner (and probably her entire weekend) with her melodramatics and her inability to cope in basic human relationships, yet here Anna is, apologizing to her.

"I was supposed to be comforting you, not drooling on your shoulder."

The statement is so sweet and so bashful that Elsa wants to cry and tell Anna how wonderful she's been. She wants to confess how guilt-ridden she feels for making Anna wake up early when the girl has classes and work, for letting her situation with her family devolve into something she can't handle on her own, for being so darn aloof.

She's cried enough.

Instead she just throws her arms around her girlfriend's shoulders and mumbles something that's supposed to be "I love you," and Anna looks at her like Elsa's just given her a kitten.

* * *

 

Anna feeds the cat.

That's her only real reason for being in Elsa's apartment alone, but afterwards she makes a beeline for the bed and collapses. Even though they've been dating for more than a year now, it's strange to be here without Elsa, without her shadow dancing from the bathroom, the sound of those god-awful nutrition bars that pass for her breakfast being unwrapped, her weight and her limbs on the bed next to Anna.

"Mrreow?"

Marshmallow hops cheerfully onto the bedspread. "Hey buddy. How are you?"

The mattress sinks as the cat pads cautiously around Anna's body, sniffing her fingers before turning away distastefully.

"Do you remember the first time I met you? You were on a leash. I know, I know. You probably want to forget that experience. But it was the first time I actually talked to Elsa too. And I thought she was going to be a really uptight, hyper-responsible, perfection-obsessed automaton, but then she just walked up dragging her cat on a leash, and I was totally floored, and I almost adopted a kitten that looked kind of like you—except that he had, like, brown patches in certain places and his hair was shorter. I even had a name picked out, and then I realized how ridiculous I was being."

Briefly, Anna considers what Elsa might say if she could see her lying on her bed, talking to her cat. She can't help it. She likes talking to people…animals…animate and inanimate objects.

As always, imagining Elsa is an enormous rabbit hole. What's Elsa's family like? Anna knows that Elsa's close with them anymore—which, in all honesty, isn't that unusual. Anna is lucky that her parents only took about a week to warm up to the idea of their daughter being gay when she came out in high school.

Absentmindedly, she rubs Marshmallow behind his ears, which is all it takes for him to forgive her offensive-smelling hands and push his face against her palm.

Where had Elsa said they lived? Minnesota? Were they bible-toting funeral picketers? Were they evil and abusive? Like the MacClays? Were they hillbillies? Could one technically be a hillbilly without being from southern Appalachia? Should Anna be preparing a rescue squad in case they sink they sink their homophobic claws into Elsa and never let her go?

The scene takes shape in Anna's mind before she can clamp down on it. Anna showing up in a pickup truck in…what was the name of that town? Something with a "w"? Anyways, Anna roaring into town on a pickup truck, demanding that they let Elsa go. And then a gunfight at high noon. And maybe a celebratory bonfire.

Anna can't help it if she has an active imagination.

"You'll be my main man, right, Marshmallow?"

His pink nose demands more petting and less talking.

* * *

 

The world starts to suck again immediately after Anna leaves. Elsa gets over it. She boards the plane. She exits the plane. She finds her younger brother waiting in the pickup area.

On the way to the hospital, they talk about their father's condition in hushed voices.

"He's only 57. How could he have a heart attack this bad?" Elsa demands. "He's not obese or at least he wasn't when…"

Kristoff peers at her from the corner of his eyes. "He hasn't been doing so well the last two years."

Elsa doesn't ask for details. Kristoff doesn't volunteer them.

He finally adds, "He's on a ventilator and an IV and everything. They don't think he's ever going to really recover. We would have taken him off, but you…we wanted to wait for you."

"Thanks," Elsa mumbles as if it's an appropriate response for the situation.

* * *

 

The hospital room is quiet until their mother breaks out in tears and wraps her arms around her. For a moment, Elsa doesn't know how to respond, but before she can come to a logical decision, the tears are pouring down her face again.

"Honey…" her mother whispers, but she doesn't finish the sentence.

"Can I see him?"

"Yes, of course, dear." A pause. A swallow. "We-we've missed you. You look so different."

Elsa struggles through a sad smile, shaken by how much older her mother looks. The wrinkles are deeper. Her skin is starting to sag a bit at the corners of her jaw.

It's nothing compared to her father. When she last saw him, he was lean and fit, graying slightly, but nothing if not the stern, capable man of Elsa's childhood. He's bald now. What's left of his once carefully groomed hair is lank on the pillow. His face is jowly. The ventilator inflates and deflates his mountainous chest like a rubber balloon. Elsa's afraid to touch him.

She reaches for his hand anyways. Here's the man who taught her that  _talk is cheap_  and  _actions speak louder than words_  and  _don't ever let anyone compromise you, Elsa, be proud of yourself_. They share more than blond hair and pale skin. It's his inflexible pride that Elsa dresses herself in every morning, his self-sacrificing stoicism that colors her sense of honor, his silence in the face of indignity that taught her what it meant to be strong.

Elsa loves him. It wasn't something they ever said much in her family. In fact, Elsa always felt a little anxious when it was voiced aloud because that meant that something monumental was on the brink of occurrence. But it was irrefutably there.

Like when Elsa won the state science fair and her father spent hours talking to her about microbial infections over ice cream at the Chatterbox Cafe. Or when Kristoff and her mother burst through the front door, arms loaded with toilet paper and napkins, laughing all over themselves, because of the huge sale at Dock Mart. Or when her father swung her mother round and round, dancing at the church social. And Elsa knows she sold them all short when she stopped answering their phone calls, when she decided that they couldn't possibly understand what she was going through, when she deemed their love fraudulent and tyrannical.

They tried to call her back to them, but talk was cheap, and Elsa couldn't stand the idea of being bought.

"He wanted you to be a doctor, like him. It upset horribly him when he heard you weren't going to medical school," her mother mentions softly.

"Not like I did it to tick him off."

"You didn't?" The surprise in her mother's voice cuts like a knife.

* * *

 

"Do you think she ever had a crush on someone? You know, as a teenager?"

"What?" Merida blinks at Anna in utter confusion.

"Elsa. Do you think she had a crush in high school?" Anna clarifies, pensively swirling her melting ice cream sundae around and around. The image of Elsa ducking behind her locker door to hide a blush is too precious to surrender, but the idea that those cheeks might color for some faceless old flame who could possibly be talking to Elsa right that second is so palpable it ruins Anna's appetite.

Shrugging, Merida sips at her lemonade. "Probably. Why?"

"Do you think she'll see her while she's back there?"

"It seems highly unlikely unless the crush is living at home. Maybe she'll see the girl's parents."

"Elsa hasn't called me yet."

Merida resists the urge to probe deeper into Anna's psyche…for all of ten seconds. "Are you worried that Elsa is going to leave you for a former Midwestern high school cheerleader?"

Anna makes a noise. She refuses to classify said noise as affirmative or negative. People are allowed to make noises, right?

"What movie were you watching last night?"

"Nothing."

"Right."

Why does Merida have to sound so skeptical?

"Why don't you trust her?"

Taken aback, Anna drops her spoon. "I trust her. Of course I trust her."

"Then why don't you trust this relationship?"

"Of course I trust this relationship," Anna insists indignantly. "Wait. What does that even mean?"

"Then why are you so worried?"

"I'm not worried."

"Yes, you are. Look, Anna, if you want this relationship to work, you have accept that you will aren't going to spend every waking moment of your lives joined at the hip—despite all your best efforts to chain Elsa to you and bring her in for show and tell."

"Show and tell?"

"You practically posed her in front of my parents."

"Your parents can be intimidating."

"Whatever. We're off topic. The point is you need to stop worrying about Elsa and start helping me figure out how to attach a piñata to Bertha's bannister.

"Duct tape. And how can I not worry? She hasn't called."

"Her father's sick, Anna!" Merida interjects. "You're not the only person in her life that matters. It's not like your love story is the only plotline in her life. She's a full person. She has a family, work, friends. You're just a part of it. I know you want to be the biggest part. I know you get caught up in the epic romance, but ultimately, you have to acknowledge that there are other things that both of you need to deal with—for instance, planning Bertha's bewildering birthday bash."

"You're never allowed to use alliteration again."

"Well, come stop me, Authoritarian Anna, if you can quit second-guessing your girlfriend long enough to do anything else. God, are you really worried that Elsa is cheating on you?"

"No." Anna deflates dramatically. She doesn't want Elsa to become the object of her paranoia. "Well. I would get it, you know. High school crushes are difficult to let go of."

"Don't drag Rapunzel into this," Merida admonishes. "The only way Elsa is going to turn into Rapunzel is if you treat her like she is."

"It's not the cheating I'm scared of," Anna confesses. "It's everything else. Like when we get into an argument about the dishes. I just think that maybe we're fundamentally incompatible and nothing we do can really fix that, and regardless of whether there's a Flynn involved—wait, would  _you_  be Flynn now?—anyways maybe we're doomed to a long, slow spiral of death where neither of us is willing to acknowledge how far things have actually deteriorated until a catastrophic event forces us to realize that we've come to despise each other."

"Again, I ask. What movie were you watching last night?"

Once Anna starts jabbering, she can't stop. "I wasn't—I'm just worried. Because sometimes Elsa just doesn't say anything. And I  _need_  her to say something, so I can figure out what's going on. Usually I can pull it out of her, and I don't mind teasing it out of her. But right now, she's out in the middle of nowhere, and I'm dying to call her, but I don't want to intrude. Sometimes I just want her to be the one to call me so I can be sure that yes, she wants this as much as I do and that no, I'm not deluding myself into thinking we're soulmates when really she doesn't feel the same way. "

"She'll call."

* * *

 

"Elsa!"

Anna's voice from the other end of the line drags the smile out of the sludgy depths of Elsa's lips.

"Hey." She winces at the chasm her tired greeting leaves. "How are you?" she tries, hoping that she at least sounds halfway human.

"I'm good. Everything is well. I mean—the other way around. You know what I mean," Anna babbles. Elsa leans into that burble of noise, eyes drifting closed. "How are you?"

"Tired."

"Everything's alright though? I don't have to save you from crazy hillbillies, do I?"

"Hillbillies? Anna, I'm from the Minnesota, not West Virginia." Lying in her childhood bedroom, clutching the phone to her ear, chuckling softly so she won't have to introduce her girlfriend to her family over the phone, Elsa feels like she's in high school again. Except she never had a girlfriend—or a boyfriend—in high school.

It was weird to walk into her parents'…her mother's house. No, it wasn't weird at first. It was oddly natural. Without even thinking about it, she kicked off her shoes and stacked them in the rack, setting her bag down in the foyer like she'd just returned from a long trip. She was fully prepared to slog up the stairs and slump on her twin mattress.

"Would you like some coffee or tea?"

That's all it took to jolt her back into reality, her mother asking her whether she wanted a drink, like Elsa was some sort of guest.

"When are you coming home?" Anna asks, reminding Elsa that yes, she has a home, and it's not this place, no matter how familiar the sky blue bed sheets are against her back.

"I'm going to stay for the funeral. It's in a few days. They were…already preparing for it…before I got here.

"Oh. Wait—is he? Did your father—"

"We let him go," Elsa says before Anna can trip over her own tongue anymore. Her fingers dig into the bedspread.

"I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

Reflexively, Elsa snaps, "Of course."

Silence on the other end.

She groans to herself. Even now that her father lying in some corner of the funeral home, Elsa can't bury the defensive rage that bubbles up into her throat at any mention of her relationship with him.

"I'm sorry. I'm just tired."

"It's okay." Anna is unusually quiet. "I miss you."

"You too." Now Elsa should ask something like "How's Marshmallow?" or "Is work okay?", but the mere idea of summoning more words up from the swamp in her chest is exhausting. "I have to go."

"Okay. Bye."

"Bye."

"I love you."

Of course Elsa should have expected it, but the simple statement startles her so much, she doesn't react for another thirty seconds, and by then she's already hung up.

She stares stupidly at her phone for several minutes, wondering if she should call Anna back again and make it count.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anna thinks that pantsuit-girl from the café might be her dream girl-if only she weren't so bad at handling reality. Elsa can't quite admit how much she loves Billy Collins, among other things.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the source of all mercy and the God of all consolation. He comforts us in all our sorrows so that we can comfort others in their sorrows with the consolation we ourselves have received from God," the minister intones.

 _Thanks be to God,_ the crowd recites. Elsa can feel her voice lost to that drone.

There are only 800 people in town, but Elsa has never felt so suffocated. Probably all the Lutherans and half the Catholics within a twenty mile radius have crowded themselves into this building. When they speak the reply, the noise doesn't sound like human speech anymore, but a swell of power vibrating through the walls. They could have been saying, "Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear," and it still would have sounded solemn and authoritative.

As a kid, Elsa was alternately in awe and bored to death of the weekly sermons and monotone responses. In her teenage years, she scoffed at services as an antiquated opiate of the masses. Once she left for college, she cut off any connection she had to the church and avoided spiritual discussions religiously.

Now she only wants to be swallowed up in the horde of voices, surrender her sense of individuality to accept the comfort of the crowd.

She thought coming back would be a disaster. That she would resent all the close-minded, small-town politics. Instead the entire experience is weirdly ordinary, like she's never left.

* * *

 

Anna starts writing a paper. And her boss asks if she can take an extra shift at the learning center. And her parents stop by to see her new apartment.

"You're so grown up," her mother gushes.

"Um, yeah. Thanks, Mom."

"Your mother's right. You've become much more responsible in the past year. We're really proud of you."

The praise is more pleasing than Anna is willing to admit.

* * *

 

And completely undeserved, because to her own horror a few days later, she realizes that she hasn't thought about Elsa at all. And immediately she tries to remember when the last time she fed Marshmallow. She was there yesterday morning, right?

Right?

To her relief, Marshmallow is still alive if a little frantic when she appears at Elsa's apartment.

"Rrreeeeow," he voices plaintively, practically climbing up Anna's leg as she scoops his wet food into a dish.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry about this, buddy. I'll give you a really nice backrub. I promise. No need to tell Elsa about this. Here you go."

* * *

 

She reaches down to pet his head, and he growls at her hand. Retreating, Anna escapes to the living room, flopping onto Elsa's couch, wondering if she's actually a good girlfriend or not.

"Your father was a wonderful man," a woman Elsa vaguely remembers from her childhood insists.

"Thank you," she replies hollowly.

"I hope you're holding up alright. Your mother is such a strong lady."

"She is. Thank you for coming."

She probably should have thought to pack a black dress when she was throwing together a bag for this trip, but it was too weird imagine her father dead. Just a few days ago, he was alive. Even though she'd ignored his existence for years, he had always been alive in the back of her mind. Forbidding, at times, but definitely alive.

It's surprisingly difficult to swallow the fact that he's gone, whatever he might have wanted to say to her permanently silenced.

Luckily, there was a black knee-length skirt tucked in the back of her old closet. After the fallout, she'd never returned home to pick up the rest of her stuff. So all of it just sat in her room, waiting for her father's death to beckon her home.

At some point that night, she finds herself sitting with Kristoff at a bench. They've both had a glass of wine and have even managed to make normal conversation with each other when yet another well-wisher drops by to tell them exactly how fabulous their father was.

Kristoff nods politely at her. Elsa reaches up to shake her hand. The woman is already well into her spiel.

"—really great man. Truly. When my son Timothy told me he was gay, your father was the one who talked me down. I didn't know  _what_  to think. He convinced me that Timmy's life wasn't over, and that he'd get through alright. He even stood up to some of the stodgier members of the school-board when they had a 'discussion' on whether students were comfortable about sharing a—"

Elsa can't stay to hear her finish the rest of her story. She can't stay still. She can't stay in this  _town_. Impulsively, she yanks herself out of her seat and storms into the backyard. The sun has set. Fireflies glow. Behind her, a crowd of family friends are still milling about the patio of her mother's house.

"Elsa," Kristoff calls out, appearing beside her.

"Why the hell would he do that?" she spits out, swiping at the pinpricks of light in the tall grass, irrationally outraged by the beauty of nature. "Did you know he did that?"

"No! I haven't heard about that before," Kristoff exclaims. His hands rise in a gesture of surrender and innocence. "But it doesn't surprise me that he did."

"Really?" Part of Elsa's brain tells her that she's being stupidly melodramatic and  _people can use your emotions against you if you let them, Elsa, share your joys, but be careful in how you broadcast your misfortunes._ It's absolutely maddening that she still hears his voice in her head, guiding her, pretending to care about her.

She gives in to her rage. It feels fantastic.

 _"_ He practically disowns his own daughter, but hey, at risk LGBT youth in the neighborhood? Let's go out for ice cream!"

"What do you want from him, Elsa? Would it make you feel better if he had helped run Timmy out of town?"

"Well, at least he could have been consistent with his own damn values!"

"It's not like you were perfect either," Kristoff retorts. Frustration spills over, ruining his attempt at levelheaded counseling. "Our entire childhood I remember you worshipping the ground he walked on and going on and on about how much we owed both our parents, blah, blah, loyalty and respect. But the first time there's a rift, you're just gone. You don't call or write or acknowledge our existence. God, Ma nearly cried every time you sent her your worthless, one-sentence thank you notes."

The accusation twists in Elsa's heart, but she's too mad to back down now.

"As if they ever made a real attempt to fix anything. He threatened—no, he did cut off paying for tuition. I worked  _hard_ , Kristoff. Don't pretend to be the angelic son.  _I_  was the one writing papers when you were off getting drunk and shooting squirrels in the Masons' pickup truck."

Elsa's never done this before, never lorded her status as the outstanding achiever over her little brother before, never admitted just how infuriating it was to see him off having fun when she toiling away to anyone—not even herself.

"My whole life, I wanted him to be proud of me. I did everything I could to please him. All I requested was  _one_  thing for myself,  _one_  thing that maybe he wasn't fully comfortable with, and he decides that everything up to that point was totally worthless because of that one choice."

Until she said it out loud, felt her own voice breaking as it left her throat, she hadn't realized how much it hurt. It hurt so bad.

Kristoff softens slightly. "Look, Elsa, I realize that he was a stubborn guy. He was ridiculously, idiotically set in his ways. But he loved you Elsa. He would never have done what he did for Timmy if he didn't. You know how hard it was for him to change his mind on anything. Of course you do. You're practically the same person sometimes—"

"Don't you dare compare me to him!" Elsa snaps. "If he loved me, if he really loved me, he had a messed up way of showing it."

" _You_ loved him! You think you were any better?" Kristoff's voice swells with frustration. "For Christ's sake, Elsa, he was dying. He was  _dying_ , and you waited  _three days_  to call back. Don't give me some bullshit about losing your phone or not checking your messages. You  _knew_. Did you want to be sure that he was too far gone to lecture you before you paid him a visit?

"I can't believ—"

" _I_  can't believe that the two of you are arguing on the day of your father's funeral!" Their mother explodes onto the scene. Brother and sister promptly wilt like shamefaced daisies in a particularly scorching sun. It would be comical if it weren't so terrifying. "Do you have no respect for the dead? You're lucky you're so worked up, the neighbors probably can't tell what you're saying!

"Sorry, Ma," Kristoff mutters.

"Yeah." Elsa shifts uncomfortably under her mother's gaze. Neither sibling seems eager to make eye contact.

Sighing angrily, their mother deflates. "Come inside and help me clean up."

* * *

 

When Anna's phone rings, she's half-asleep and the noise startles her so much she jerks and lands half on top of Marshmallow.

"EEEEOW!"

"Sorry! Sorry!" The cat springs out from beneath Anna and the couch the first chance he gets and stalks over to the bedroom. "Hello," she says blearily into the receiver.

A voice echoes from the speaker, peculiarly cheerful and lighthearted. "Anna!"

"Elsa?" Anna's brain tries to catch up with what's happening.

"Yes?"

"What're you doing?"

"Talking to you." The way she answers, Anna can imagine her lying on a fuzzy comforter, twirling a strand of blond hair around her finger.

"I gathered as much." Propping a pillow behind her head, Anna leans back against the couch.

"What are  _you_  doing?" the voice from the other end asks playfully.

Anna bites her lip and smirks. "Talking to you."

"Not fair. That was my line."

Anna's heart melts. She might turn into goo before this conversation is over. "Well, it's mine now."

Elsa giggles, which is odd. Usually, her girlfriend is more reserved. Earnest, but dignified. It takes a lot of coaxing (and yeah, some under-the-covers activity helps too) to get Elsa anywhere near this lighthearted, childlike state. She's never seen it outside the shared darkness of their bedrooms.

She gets it. Elsa hates feeling vulnerable, and Anna is willing to respect those boundaries.

But this innocent delight is too precious to pass up.

"I miss you," Elsa says timidly from the other end.

"I miss you too, sweetheart," Anna replies, warming up from the inside out. But when her girlfriend giggles  _again_ , Anna has to ask the question. "Are you drunk?"

"A little," Elsa admits readily.

"I don't think I've ever seen you drunk before." It's true. A couple of glasses of wine sums up her observations on Elsa's drinking habits.

"You're still not  _seeing_  me really. We're on the phone. You can't see me."

"You know for someone who's drunk, you're pretty perceptive."

"I'm only a  _little_  drunk."

Anna finds this assertion hilarious, but she rolls with it. "Okay, so you're only just drunk enough to dial your girlfriend from—wait where are you? Wasn't your father's funeral today?"

"Yep. It was  _horrible_ ," Elsa moans petulantly.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Are you—"

"Anna?" she interrupts.

"Yes?"

Elsa's voice is deadly serious. "I wanna ride a bicycle."

"Um." Anna tries to come up with an appropriate response. "Okay?"

Apparently that's enough for Elsa. "Don't you think it's sad?"

"What's sad?"

"That once you die, you're stuck forever. And everyone makes a big deal out of burying you, but fifteen years from now,  _no one_ will even remember you existed, or whether you were important, or anything about you except for your name and the dates on your headstone."

"I guess that's kind of sad."

Before Anna can pinpoint exactly where Elsa is going with this line of reasoning, her girlfriend flies off on another tangent. "I want to scoop them all up. And then they can go riding through the countryside with me."

Maybe Anna's just too sleep-deprived for this conversation right now. Or maybe Elsa's more than a little drunk. "What?  _What_  are you scooping up?"

"Who," Elsa corrects mildly. "Enid Parker. Clarence Augustus Bell. Jean Mor-mor-ten-sen." Elsa's tongue trips over the syllables of the last name, in endearing contrast to her typically precise enunciation.

"Who are you talking about?"

"The dead people."

"What?" Just when Anna thought this conversation couldn't get any weirder. It's far too late for  _The Sixth Sense_.

"I want to bring them with me. So they can see everything. And they can tell me about their lives. Otherwise it must be so boring for them."

"That's…whimsical," Anna manages when all she wants to do is erupt into,  _What the hell are you talking about?_

"Do you think they'd like it?" Elsa asks hopefully.

Choosing to ignore any more mystifying questions until she figures out exactly what's going on in Elsa's head, she demands, "Where are you?"

"In the cement-ce-me-ta-ry." Elsa stumbles over the word.

"You're in the cemetery!?" A wave of disbelief and concern crashes into Anna's amused complacency. "Elsa! What are you doing in the cemetery? Did you drive there? While you were drunk?"

"I'm lying on the ground. It smells like dirt."

"Did you  _drive_ there?"

"No. It's only a few blocks from my house." Elsa seems to pause and correct herself. "From my parents' house." She revises it again, haltingly. "To my mother's house." Suddenly, she changes course. "Anna, I want to go home."

"Please do. You shouldn't be out this late."

"No, no," Elsa objects clumsily. "I want to come home. To you. You smell nice. Like dirt."

Anna disregards the way this statement makes her want to reach out and tuck Elsa's hair behind her ear. She'll relive the moment later, framed in a different context, one that doesn't involve  _Night of the Living Dead_. "Are you alone?"

"Yes," Elsa replies happily.

"You're alone and drunk in a cemetery at…what time is it over there anyways, 11 at night?"

"I guess," Elsa agrees.

"God, what are you even wearing?"

A long pause. "…Are you trying to have phone sex with me?" Elsa finally questions, as though genuinely baffled by Anna's interrogation.

"What? No!" The blood surges into Anna's face. "Elsa, just go back to your parents' house, please."

Of course, Elsa resorts to the standard three-year-old's reply. "I don't wanna." Really, she should have seen it coming.

"Come on, Elsa. Just go home. Please. I'll worry about you if you're out there in a cemetery by yourself in the middle of the night."

"It's not dangerous, Anna. Nothing bad ever happens here. You're so cute when you're overprotective."

 _You're so cute when you're absolutely infuriating_ , Anna thinks. Out loud she says, "Please. It's late. You need to go home and get in bed."

"It's not that late," Elsa complains. "Besides,  _nothing_  happens here. Like maybe some teenagers will get drunk and driving around. Or they'll decide to start shooting at—"

"Shooting?! You're standing around in a graveyard in the dark in a town where the teenagers go out at night with guns?!"

"Actually I'm lying down. And nobody goes hunting in a graveyard Anna."

"Why are you lying down?"

"It's kind of nice."

In a last-ditch effort, Anna tries to introduce a dose of severity into her tone. "Elsa. Go home. I mean it. I'm tired. You're drunk. Just listen to me. Stay on the phone with me and walk—"

Abruptly, Elsa's voice turns cold. "Well, if you don't want to talk, you could have just said so."

The line clicks dead.

Anna wastes a full, incredulous minute staring at her phone. Where the hell did that come from? This situation is too absurd for her to process right now. But process it she will, because somewhere on the other side of the country, her lunatic, drunk, probably-grieving girlfriend is lying on her back with her head against a gravestone waiting for some small-town psycho to come murder her with a buzzsaw and a jack o' lantern—

Okay, maybe Anna's imagination is running away with her again, but  _still_.

She calls Elsa's number, and when Elsa doesn't pick up, she calls again. And again. And sends a text that says something to the effect of,  _Damn it, Elsa, if you don't pick up, I swear I'm going to call the local police next and have them escort you home._ Actually that's exactly what it says. And perhaps that's why Elsa answers the phone the fourth time Anna calls.

"What?" Elsa practically snarls into the phone.

"Elsa." Anna summons a wellspring of patience she never knew she had. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong."

"You called me drunk from a cemetery on the night of your father's funeral. I think it's safe to say there's something wrong."

"I love you." Apparently Elsa's anger has melted and she's returned to a state of intoxicated affability. Anna's not sure whether that's a good thing yet.

"I love you too," she responds. "Now tell me what's wrong."

"I love you. Did I tell you that?"

Now Anna's worried that Elsa has some form of amnesia. On top of everything else. It's probably just the alcohol. "Yes. Why are you at the graveyard?"

"I didn't want to stay in the house."

Feeling like world's most underpaid and disadvantaged therapist, Anna redirects her questioning. "How was the funeral?"

"Horrible."

"Why didn't you like it?"

"It was a funeral. Was I supposed to be happy?" Evidently even drunk, loopy Elsa has caustic side.

"Was there anything in particular that you didn't like?" Man, Anna would be a great therapist. Maybe she should have majored in psychology after all.

"Everyone afterwards. Everyone said he was such a great man. They didn't even know him. How could they say that?"

"He probably did nice things for them." Anna's treading in dangerous waters now. She has no idea how Elsa actually feels about her parents, but the fact that she hadn't brought them up in nearly a year of dating, the fact that she hasn't talked to them in years, the fact that she's outside in a cemetery on the night of her father's funeral are all fairly strong indicators that things are less than rosy.

The last thing Anna wants is to lose Elsa over a fight about her parents.

"Why?" Elsa asks plaintively. "Why would he do nice things for them?"

"Uhhh…because he wasn't an evil, sadistic serial killer?"  _Like the kind that's going to jump out from behind a tombstone if you don't get your butt inside a house._

"He makes me so mad. He's dead. And I don't know whether I hate him or not."

"You don't hate him." That much is certain. "You wouldn't cry over his death if you hated him."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," Anna sighs. "Tell me about him," she requests gently.

Yes, it's 11:30 and Anna is tired and she'd really rather do this some other day, in person, maybe with a cup of coffee, but Elsa needs this  _now_  and Anna wants to be a good girlfriend. She wants to be a good person, the kind that Elsa can depend upon for the rest of her life.

"He was…complicated." A loud, drunken sigh. "No. He wasn't complicated. Or more compli-compli-complicated than anyone else. I just—I don't know how to feel about him."

"What was he like?"

"He was proud." Something solidifies in Elsa's voice. "His parents were immigrants, so he always felt like he had to prove that he was living up to their dreams. Worked through medical school. Became the town doctor. Said it was important that we carry on in his footsteps because our grandparents had sacrificed their whole lives to create this opportunity for us. We couldn't squander it."

"That sounds like a lot of pressure."

"I guess. But I understood it. I agreed with him mostly. I wanted them to be proud of me."

The yearning in her voice hurts Anna's heart. She thinks of that wonderful moment, after years of watching her academic floundering with growing bemusement and dismay, when her father called her responsible. "Of course you did."

"He was. I thought he was. But then I told him I was gay, and it was like none of anything I did mattered." Elsa's voice wavers. "Like I ruined everything he cared about with that one thing.

"Was he mad?"

"They were both mad. They yelled a lot. And I yelled a lot. I stopped talking to them. He thinks—thought—I didn't go to med school to spite him."

"Did you?"

"No!" the unexpected outrage startles Anna. "I didn't go to med school, because he cut me off and I didn't want to graduate $200,000 in debt!"

"Maybe he thought it would force you to talk to him."

"Screw him," Elsa says with more pain than anger.

"A little late for that."

When she doesn't respond, Anna grows increasingly uneasy. What if she crossed an invisible line?

"He helped this kid," Elsa eventually elaborates. "This kid who came out in high school I guess. He helped him. Why would he do that? How could he disown me but break out the rainbow banners for somebody else's child?"

"I don't know. You know him better than I do." As the words leave her mouth, Anna wonders if she should have spoken in the present tense.

"I want to think it means he would have been okay with me. But maybe not. Maybe he'd only been willing to tolerate in someone else's kid. And I want to ask him. I want to scream at him, but he doesn't say anything. I'm screaming at him, and he doesn't say anything." The trembling worsens in Elsa's voice. Each word quivers pitifully, like baby robins fallen from their nest.

More than anything, Anna wishes she could be there, in small-town Minnesota, with a box of tissues and a comforter. She feels impossibly helpless as she tries to make soothing noises through the phone line.

"If he were here, he would be proud of you."

It's the cheesiest line Anna has. She can't even name what movie, TV show, or book she got it from because it's probably buried somewhere in all of them. There's no way of knowing whether it's actually true or not, because maybe he would only be proud of a doctor for a daughter, but if it's what Elsa needs to hear, then she'll say it every day for the rest of her life.

"You don't know that."

This is where Anna is supposed to say, "I do." Or something. Instead, the first thing that pops into her head and out of her mouth is, "Who cares?"

A surprised, stifled laugh echoes from the other end of the line.

"He's dead, Elsa. Remember him however you want." Flinching a little at her own bluntness, Anna digs for the right words. "As someone who loved you. As someone you looked up to." Anna's brain works in overdrive, trying to articulate some concept she barely comprehends herself. "There's no point sorting out exactly how he would have felt about you if he were alive. So believe in something that makes you happy."

"Thanks, Socrates."

Anna finds Elsa's sarcasm strangely comforting and appropriate. Then she starts to wonder whether Socrates would have agreed with anything she just said. After all, he did warn Crito—

"Anna?"

"Hmm. Wh—Yes?"

"You make me really mad too sometimes."

"Um…" Anna can't take much more of this cryptic stuff.

"I love you."

"I love you too." Anna imagines Elsa splayed out in a dark cemetery, love radiating from her like infrared waves. "Do you think you want to go back inside now?"

"Maybe."

She gets the distinct impression that Elsa is teasing her. So she asks the next logical thing.

"Are you teasing me?"

"Do you want me to? You usually like it fast."

Choking, Anna splutters, "What?!"

Somewhere in Minnesota, Elsa cackles like a witch in a graveyard.

"Okay. Okay. You need to go home. Like now. Clearly the boggy air is having its way with your brain." This night is already more than Anna can handle. "And don't you dare stop for anyone. No matter how pretty they look."

"Are you insecure?"

"Well, my girlfriend longs to go traipsing around the countryside with zombies. I think I have a right to feel threatened."

"They're not zombies. Just skeletons. And it's not traipsing if I'm on my bike."

Anna marvels at Elsa's ability to formulate coherent counterarguments while tipsy.

Her own rejoinder falls flat. "If you ever decide to return to the realm of the living, give me a call."

"But I'm already on the phone with you."

"I've noticed."

"But-" Elsa seems to lose track of the discussion, and Anna waits for her to martial her thoughts. It's nearly midnight. "I love you."

"You keep saying that."

"I know. I want it to count."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know."

There's no use trying to get logic from her right now. "Will you go home?"

"I guess," Elsa caves.

"Stay on the phone."

"Okay."

Aware of the creeping lethargy in that distant voice, Anna reminds her, "And make sure there are no cars when you're crossing the road."

"I'll drink all my milk too," comes the deadpan.

"Good. I want you to grow up strong." Anna's getting pretty good at this sarcasm thing. If only Elsa were here to see her perfectly straight face.

"Anna…" her girlfriend complains.

"Yes?" she answers innocently.

"Why are you being so mean?"

"I'll stop being mean when you get to your house. Now move it."

Twenty minutes of grumbling later, Elsa clatters onto what sounds like front steps. "I made it. I'm alive," she announces.

"Good. Now are you sure this is your house and not some bar with really pretty nights?"

"Yes."

"It's not your neighbor's house."

"It's not."

"Positive it's not a brothel?"

"Positive."

"Well, in that case, you—"

A faraway noise cuts in. "Elsa! Where have you been?!" Definitely her mother.

"Out," she replies shortly.

Anna speculates on whether teenage Elsa was this surly. She'd probably look cute, all sullen and sulky.

Without warning, the unfamiliar voice is right up against Anna's ear. "Who is this?"

Elsa protests in the background, "Ma, leave Anna alone."

"Go into the kitchen.  _You_  are in no shape to be arguing with me tonight."

Wincing at that stern dismissal, Anna resolves to plunge forward. She has to meet the woman eventually, right? "Hello, I'm Anna."

Best foot forward. Be charming. Dazzle her with your brilliant cordiality. Anna's pep talk is blindingly inadequate. This is worse than talking to Elsa for the first time.

"Anna," Elsa's mother echoes warily. "Do you know where my daughter has been tonight?"

Oh, God. Really? Why does Anna suddenly feel like the shady loner boyfriend? How is this fair? She didn't convince Elsa to get drunk and visit a scary place in the dark.

"Uh. She told me she was in the cemetery when she called." Please don't bite my head off. Please don't bite my head off. Please don't bite my head off. "And I got her to go home." Because I'm a good person and I'm not violating your daughter…in the creepy way.

Shuffling and further objections from Elsa reverberate through the speaker.

"Thank you," Elsa's mother says. Anna can't tell if she's actually grateful or not. She's about to force out a "you're welcome" and "goodnight", but the older woman starts again. "Are you-are you together with my daughter?"

"…yes," Anna ventures hesitantly.

"I see."

The silence is excruciating.

"I hope I'll see you at Thanksgiving."

"Oh. Um." Was that an invitation? "Sure. That sounds—uh—lovely."

"Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

Anna stares at the phone, blown away.

And then a sense of emptiness settles in. She doesn't dare call or text in case Elsa's mother still has her phone, but god, she wants to hear Elsa say, "I love you," one more time.

* * *

 

Kristoff and Elsa have been driving nonstop for what feels like years. Actually, it's been sixteen hours.

"Remind me again why I didn't just take the plane back?" Elsa groans as she forces herself out of an uncomfortable and unsatisfactory nap.

"Because we thought this would be a good chance to talk things out."

And it was. For the first few hours, they managed to catch up on each other's lives. Kristoff ticked off all the major hometown happenings of the last few years like a newsreel. Elsa filled him in on her job, her apartment, the city, Anna. But by the time they parked at their first rest stop, she could feel her legs curdling.

Highway signs flash past her eyes. "We're almost there. Do you want me to take over?"

"Nah. Too much trouble to stop now. Might as well keep going."

They discussed their father. Their favorite and least favorite stories about him. But neither of them acknowledge the night of his funeral. Chances are they'll never talk about it. Elsa can live with that.

"I'm going to call Anna. Let her know we're almost there."

"Are the two of you living together?" he asks. There's something askew in Kristoff's demeanor whenever the conversation turns toward Anna, like he's grappling with some thought. Elsa doesn't know what to make of it. Even if he didn't slap a rainbow sticker on his chest, he did his best to play mediator when Elsa came out. He's at least a little more open-minded than their parents.

"No." Though sometimes they're already married.

"Are you going to stay the night? You should probably get some rest."

"Maybe. I'm going on to New Hampshire. Do you have a couch I can crash on?"

"I have a guest room."

"Good enough."

Elsa's barely awake brain succumbs again to a half-sleep. A toothy grin floats through her dreams.

* * *

 

Anna flips through pages of Food Network recipes, hoping to figure out what she can do with a pound and a half of ground beef. She's camped out at Elsa's, waiting for her girlfriend to get home so she can shove food down her throat.

And she'll get to meet Elsa's brother…who can't possibly be as intimidating as her mother, right?

At some point, Anna gives up her attempt at sophistication and just starts rolling up meatballs. It's all very housewife-y and soothing, so when the buzzer finally sounds from Elsa's speaker, she nearly has a heart attack. Luckily the cilantro is already chopped and she only drops a box of spaghetti as opposed to the chef's knife.

"Hello?" she calls down into the microphone.

"Anna? Let us up."

"Why? Did you lose your key? Are you an imposter?"

"Anna—" Elsa starts in her quit-being-a-five-year-old-already voice.

"Okay. Okay." She punches the buzzer.

"Thank you," the voice intones, only slightly mollified.

Next thing Anna knows, they're hugging in the doorway of the apartment, Elsa's overnight bag digging into her abdomen. The body in her arms is solid, wonderfully real and annoyingly bony.

"Hey, I missed you."

Elsa makes an affirmative noise into the crook of her shoulder, and Anna tugs them both backwards, into the room to make way for Elsa's younger brother who steps forward—

—And gets her second heart attack of the evening.

"Kristoff?" she asks in disbelief, pulling away from Elsa to gape at the good-natured—if somewhat goofy—intern she met on that overseas trip.

"Hello, Anna. It's been awhile." With great determination, he grasps Anna's limp hand in his own and shakes it vigorously, all the while making excessive eye contact. She gets the sense that what he really means is, "We are never going to tell my sister about the time I drunkenly proposed to you with a lyre from the Athenian national monument."

"Oh. Hey. I haven't seen you in forever," she replies, stunned. By which she means, "Agreed."

In any decent romantic drama, this ironic revelation would probably lead to some weird love triangle with an abundance of jealousy and awkward staring contests. But Anna hasn't lived in that world for a while. And she likes the new universe she's living in now, with Elsa and Marshmallow and Bertha's bewildering birthday bash, and she'll do whatever it takes to keep it. Even if that means sacrificing the opportunity for an engrossing and gut-wrenching spectacle that professes to reveal the true complexities of romantic entanglements.

So she leaves her pathetic response as is and glides over Elsa's curious, "You've met before?" with a brief, "Yeah. We were in the same overseas program." She lets Elsa go through her perfunctory expression of curiosity, even though she can tell all her girlfriend wants to do is collapse onto a bed.

The trio sit down to an urbane and comfortable dinner. Afterwards, Kristoff disappears for a shower, Elsa starts unpacking her bag, and Anna decides to deal with the dishes. It's all so stupidly domestic and boring, especially when a hand reaches out to intercept the plate she's about to place in the drying rack, and Elsa materializes by her side with a towel.

Anna can't imagine a better life.

* * *

 

Except it does gets better that weekend when Elsa asks her out on a date, which is weird because they don't really  _date_  anymore. Like they don't do the thing where one of them nervously fumbles through a phone call with a date, time and place and the other one becomes simultaneously elated and sick to their stomach. They sort of just hang out. When they make plans together, they make plans  _together_. They don't have to consciously coordinate schedules anymore.

But now Elsa's asking her to meet her at some café on Saturday at two, and Anna doesn't really know why they aren't just spending the entire day together, like they usually do, lazing around. It feels good though. Spontaneous and clean after the turmoil of Elsa's family emergency.

She strides into the little coffee shop on State Street with all the excitement of a first date, and none of the nausea. From a table in the corner, Elsa beams at her in her shy, I'm-sorry-for-being-too-eager manner.

Anna rolls several suave opening lines around with her tongue. "Fancy meeting you here," or "So what's this all about?" The unbidden smile stretches her mouth so wide that it's hard to speak.

Fortunately, Elsa beats her to the punch.

"I used to see you all the time," she says abruptly.

Confusion splashes Anna in the face. Have they not been seeing enough each other? Maybe she's talking about her trip?

"I used to see you all the time at Oak's Lounge," Elsa clarifies. "The café on the corner of Eastern and King. You probably didn't notice me there."

Anna's heart swoops. She suddenly remembers her last year of college, tiptoeing through the doors of the local café, praying to see a familiar shock of blond hair hovering over a thick book, all the muscles under her skin vibrating, practically seasick with anticipation. That era of directionless despair seems like a lifetime ago. Or maybe more like an unusually bleak chapter in an otherwise sunny biography, to be put aside as soon as it has passed. Her present relationship with Elsa stands tall and sound. In its shadow, the transient, infantile infatuation she once knew is all but forgotten. She rarely even connects pantsuit-girl, that self-serving fantasy-construct, with the Elsa she's fallen in love with. It's the most natural thing in the world to tell her friends, "Oh, we met a year ago at a Dunkin' Donuts."

While Anna relives all those encounters and delusions, Elsa forges ahead, confessing, "Sometimes I used to go down there just hoping I might run into you. I wasn't sure whether I actually wanted to talk to you or not. I mean, my life was insane then. I was looking for work, and I didn't have many options. I actually ended up having to move. But before that, I saw you once in the park."

Elsa is babbling. Elsa never babbles. Anna babbles her head silly, and Elsa perches in her seat and smiles indulgently. But here Elsa is, babbling.

Anna doesn't know  _how_  to smile indulgently.

"You probably don't remember. But I saw you in the park that once, and I worked up the nerve to go talk to you. But I'd been so distracted with psyching myself up to do it, I forgot that I had Marshmallow on a leash, and when I came up to you, you were just gaping at me, and I had to explain that yes, I was walking my cat for a dumb bet. I'm not even sure how I managed to survive it, I was so embarrassed. After that, I figured it was doomed. I couldn't possibly go talk to you again, because you'd just remember me as the weird cat-lady. And I know you don't remember this, and it makes no sense for me to bring it up now. It's just that when you—"

"I remember," Anna interrupts. It seems necessary to say  _something_  before Elsa hyperventilates. "I remember you were trying to prove cats can do anything dogs can."

Elsa's face colors. Anna is still in love with that shade of pink.

"Yeah," she mumbles. "I guess that must have been a pretty interesting encounter for you."

"No!" Her vehemence startles the both of them. "I mean it was interesting. But not in a bad way. And I remember all of it." Blue eyes regard her suspiciously, but Anna is taking over the chatter train. "Your pantsuit. You were wearing this tan pantsuit that was with a really stiff-looking collar. Like maybe you ironed it a lot. I don't know. And I immediately started imagining what it would be like if we were dating," she rushes out, determined to prove that she's not telling a white lie to spare Elsa's feelings.

Elsa's face is ajar and awestruck, as though Anna is handing a kitten on Christmas morning.

"Then, another day you came up to me with the cat, and yeah, it was strange, but all I could think afterwards was, 'Wow, I'm such a loser. I can't even say hello. And why does she have to be so pretty?' But I kept going to the Lounge, because I wanted to see you." Anna finally takes a second to breathe.

The floodgates burst apart, and neither of them can get the words out fast enough. They swap stories of each other until the memories pile up between them like a mountain—no, not a mountain—a bridge. Like they're crossing a chasm they forgot existed.

It's not a wholly unfamiliar experience, this explosion of sharing. When they first started dating, it happened all the time. By sheer accident, they would discover that they both had hated the Powerpuff Girls as children, only to become obsessed as teenagers. Or that they both had eaten at the same German restaurant with the creepy waiter before. Or that they both loved Lindt truffles. Each newly uncovered mutual interest would ignite a firestorm of animated conversation and analysis. Anna assumed that they had exhausted these hidden pools of delight, that they knew each other too fully to be caught off guard by them anymore. She was wrong.

She's been bushwhacked from behind, and she loves it.

Reaching for Elsa's careful fingers, she squeezes gently. "Elsa, why…why didn't you tell me when we first met? Outside of Dunkin' Donuts. Why not say something like, 'Oh, I used to see you at Oak's Lounge all the time.'"

A small, bashful smile tugs at Elsa's lips. "I was scared I guess. I didn't want to seem too crazy. We both were a little creepy."

"Yeah. That's probably why I didn't tell you about it either."

They sit there for a while, grinning dopily.

"So is that why you wanted me to come here today? You had confess to your secret obsession with me?"

"Maybe," Elsa replies coyly. Before she continues, a tongue flicks out nervously between her lips. "I wanted you to know it because sometimes, I don't…gush about you. I'm not comfortable throwing myself at people, even if I really want to. I love you. I'd do silly, idiotic things to be around you, but I hate admitting it."

"That's okay," Anna says. Of course, it's okay. Elsa makes her head spin off its brainstem every time she picks up a dropped pencil and places it on the desk for her. If she decided to come home with a heart-holding teddy bear and make baby noises, well, Anna would probably have an aneurism.

"No," Elsa demurs resolutely. "You deserve to know that I love you to the point of stupidity, to the point of humiliating myself. And you deserve to hear it and feel it, more often than I'm willing to say it. I just need you to know that I really do love you, even when I don't say it." She looks away when she finishes speaking, avoiding Anna's gaze.

"Elsa." Touched, Anna searches for something suitably reassuring and equally goddamn romantic to respond with. Instead she finds herself fumbling to explain why she loves Elsa and why it wouldn't be the same if she started singing love songs while braiding Anna's hair in a meadow filled with prairie voles.

When she was a kid, Anna believed True Love meant fighting dragons, defying evil kings, and risking it all for another person. If you weren't willing to die for it, it wasn't True.

Then she grew up a little and realized that mortal danger rarely materialized modern Western society. In the absence of perilous adventures, Anna cast about for another litmus test for love. She latched onto rom-coms and Valentine's Day.

That's how you could tell someone really loved you: if they came home with roses and took you to the beach at sunset.

It seemed like love was all about the huge declarations, the over-the-top prom-posals, the idea that if you really loved someone, if you weren't ashamed of your love, then you'd better scream it from the tallest tower.

It seemed like it couldn't be too safe either, because if "love" was too safe, you were probably just using that person to hide your love for someone else. Love had to be exciting, to be genuine.

Once she found out what "exciting" actually meant, it seemed like you also had to be sexually attracted to that person. You had to think they were pretty all the time, even when they had a bad hair day, and when  _you_  slept, you had to adorable and appropriately vulnerable—not drooly.

But old people loved each other too. And it seemed like you had to be happy for a long time together, somehow. It was never clear how.

And it seemed like opposites attracted and completed each other. And then it seemed like they attacked each other, and that longtime couples grew into each other.

And it seemed like people fell in love for no reason at all.

It was all this  _stuff_. It was suffocating and mesmerizing, and Anna wanted it so bad.

"Elsa," she repeats helplessly.

Elsa waits, impossibly patient.

When she first saw Elsa in the café, that's all Anna wanted: the last scene of a feel-good movie with the absolute certainty that these two people will be happy forever; "TRUE LOVE" emblazoned across her chest on a T-shirt with an arrow pointing to her soul-mate; the guarantee that her life had been worthwhile because she'd found someone to share it with.

It turned out that finding True Love was the least of her worries. She had to put her own future together, recover her lost optimism and bearing. By the time she saw Elsa again, standing in line at Dunkin' Donuts, True Love felt like a silly childhood dream. When she'd chased after Elsa a small part of her had still been chasing the crazy, doomed dream of a naïve girl. But the rest of her knew, had  _learned_ , that True Love wasn't about chasing after someone on a grey sidewalk until your legs gave out. Her desperation to meet the girl inside the pantsuit, at the other end of the cat leash, with her hands wrapped around a mug of some steaming drink, had nothing to do with losing the opportunity to find True Love, but losing the chance to know  _Elsa_.

She'd dreamed about Elsa for so long, she needed to make sure the girl was  _real_.

"I wasn't looking for True Love," Anna stammers at last. "That day. When I saw you again. I was looking for  _you_."

Tilting her head, Elsa squints back at her. It was supposed to be a compliment or at least vaguely romantic, but of course, Anna botched it. She made it sound like she didn't think Elsa was attractive or something.

"I mean—It's just—" Anna doesn't know how to articulate this revelation. The idea of it makes sense in her head, but out loud the words become either pretentious or inane.

No. Elsa's not the True Love Anna was looking for. She doesn't buy roses or battle tyrants. She doesn't do grand gestures. She's safe. Sometimes she's exciting, and sometimes she bores Anna to death going on about her work day. Not everything she does makes Anna happy and warm on the inside. God, sometimes Anna wants to slap her she's so annoying, insisting with unfounded expertise that moisture was coming in through the open window, anal about scraping all the gravy from Marshmallow's cans of wet food, lecturing Anna on how to dress herself in the mornings. But they work.

They're not actually opposites, not really complementary, and not quite similar either. But they both get worked up by the same news stories, both want to leave parties at around the same time, both like to hole up in little cafés and fall in love with the people around them. Elsa can do the laundry and bookkeeping and Anna can cook and dust the furniture. They can trade off cleaning the bathroom.

And they can spend the rest of their lives together, free from the fever and paraphernalia of True Love.

"I love you," Anna chokes out.

"I love you too."

Elsa loves her, and she wants her to feel it.

"I love you," Anna restates, trying to devise an proper ending to that thought. All the lines she's ever heard, from every movie, every novel, every schmaltzy soap opera flood into her head.

The flattering but superficial. _I love you, and you're beautiful. I love you_ because _you're beautiful, because you_ are _beautiful…on the inside. You look lovely in the moonlight. You remind me of the sunrise. You're gorgeous. I can see your beautiful soul._

The absurdly optimistic ones.  _Let me love you forever. Let's grow old together. We're never growing old. Marry me? Nothing can hurt us now. Love conquers all._

The bordering on unhealthy.  _I'll give up everything. I can't breathe when you're not in the room. I need you. I can't live without you._

The outright unhealthy.  _You're my drug. The only good thing I have going for me. You're_ mine _._   _It hurts just looking at you. I'd kill myself. Please don't leave me._

Anna's favorites, the sickeningly sweet.  _You are my sunshine. Now I am whole. Sugar is sweet, so are you. My day just got brighter. You complete me. You make my dr—_

"Sometimes," Elsa whispers softly, "you feel like a dream come true."

The lump in Anna's throat swells until she feels like she'll strangle herself on it if she doesn't speak. "You're better than any dream I've ever had," she breathes.

They stay in the café all afternoon until "Ice Ice Baby" starts playing through the speakers, and Elsa winces, and Anna laughs so hard she almost cries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Random bits of trivia:
> 
> Elsa's hometown was inspired partly by Lake Wobegon from A Prairie Home Companion (I haven't listened to the show in forever, so a lot of it I just made up). Mostly because I was trying to figure out the details of the town and remembered that there were a lot of Norwegian immigrants in the Midwest.
> 
> When I was writing the third chapter (which was probably nearly a month ago) I wanted to give Elsa a sibling and Kristoff seemed like the best option-until I was halfway through and remembered that he made a cameo in the first chapter in Anna's foreign exchange program. Then I figured, "Who cares? He can be both." One reviewer noticed it in the last chapter, so I thought I'd congratulate them.
> 
> This last scene with Anna was originally written as mostly dialogue with Anna trying to articulate what she felt. It sucked. Some things are better left unspoken, unless you want to sound like an overly earnest motivational speaker. In a rare burst of industry, I rewrote most of the scene.
> 
> Many things in Elsa's scenes are directly inspired by specific Billy Collins poems. In total, I "borrowed" (let's just pretend I made meaningful and sophisticated allusions) lines and ideas from ten poems: 4 in Chapter 2, 5 in Chapter 3, and 1 in Chapter 4.
> 
> I was going to have some sort of contest to see who could figure out most of them, but that idea got way too complicated. In any case, I am curious to see if anyone picked up on them and how many people can name. Some of them are easy. In Chapter 3, I literally talk about Elsa reading particular poems. Others are embedded into the storyline. A few are lines I worked in from certain poems. If anyone can name them all, I will be very impressed.
> 
> I might even write something for you.


End file.
